Susan Pawlak-Seaman: 'Upskirt' ruling not a pretty picture

It isn't because pants are more comfortable. Or because our office is freezing. Year-round.

It isn't because I don't have dresses. Because I do. Lots of them.

It isn't even because if I put them on, I'd have to wear pantyhose. (Though they are one of my least favorite things.)

That said, I guess some of the above may have unconsciously factored into my decision to be a slack-er. But honestly, I've never been able to totally explain to myself why I quit wearing skirts.

Until now.

My revelation came Wednesday when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway did not break the law.

And why not? Because the women were not nude or partially nude.

Turns out the way the law is written, there are certain places where your privacy is legally assured — the bathroom or the shower, for example. However, that protection doesn't extend to clothed folks in public places.

So if you are out in a public place — such as a subway — and you are wearing clothes (as most sane people do, especially in this weather), you are at the mercy of crotch-ety creeps with cellphone cameras.

There's even a word for this unsavory pastime: "upskirting."

In the pre-electronic era, it was the kind of thing teenage boys in hormonal overdrive did when teenage girls walked up a flight of stairs. The boys would stand at the bottom landing and look up lasciviously as they tried to catch a naughty glimpse.

The practice was especially popular in the mini-skirt era when I grew up. (Yes, guys, we knew exactly what you were doing.)

But that was high school stuff. There's something far more disturbing about a total stranger who gets his jollies from surreptitiously photographing or videotaping unsuspecting women.

It turns my stomach to think what this guy did when (in the privacy of his own home, I'm sure) he looked at the pictures he'd taken.

And now, to think he has gotten off ...

Ick.

Yes, I know that the SJC had to abide by the letter of the law. I know that there was an immediate outcry about the ruling and that House Speaker Bob DeLeo, among others, has vowed to eliminate the loophole.

But that doesn't undo the damage that has been done. It doesn't change the fact that who knows how many women were victimized not just once, but twice — the second time by a legal system that should have protected them.

They and their privacy and sense of security have been violated in a particularly unsettling manner and that can't be allowed to happen again.